For years our two families of Hendersons have operated on the premise that each group had emigrated separately, the first arriving in the very early 1660's on the Delmarva Peninsula (Northampton and Accomack County VA), and the second Henderson family arriving roughly seventy years later, probably through the port of Wilmington, and then taking up land in what became Onslow County NC. To be fair, a couple of researchers from the Delmarva group gave the idea of a direct connection more weight than our group did, but no paper connection had ever been made between the two groups,* so we just had to shrug and wonder. Thanks to the magic of DNA testing, we've learned that not only is there a connection, but potentially a much closer one than we thought. This means we need to have another look at the paper trail.
A slight adjustment to what had been a longstanding chronology for the Onslow group (which I won't go into here, but which I believe is a correct change since it brings my work into alignment with that of Morris Meyers's) has shown several possibilities where the elusive connection might exist.
You'll see at the bottom of the first article the original version of the chart I made to help us quickly identify the places in the Delmarva tree where a direct connection with our James of Onslow might have occurred. In this article I am posting an updated version of the chart in which I believe I have eliminated two of the former candidates that were being investigated as potential ancestors.
I am not a linear researcher. I tend to be a bit like a hummingbird, flitting intensely from question to question, and person to person in the database, but at the end of the day (or week, or month), I typically arrive at a conclusion I can support with reasoning and evidence. I can't say that I'm pursuing this leg of the research in as systematic a way as I'd have liked (too many tangents lead me astray in the web of interconnected families), but I can say that my haphazard method has produced results.
As I said, I have eliminated two of the male candidates from the original chart, both of them sons of John and Elizabeth Barnabe Henderson. The John Henderson-Elizabeth Barnabe line is prolific and by far the best documented of the Delmarva group. John Henderson's younger brothers William (m. Sarah Bishop) and James Junior (m. Esther) are much less so, so I started with John's only two sons who might be long-shot possibilities: William b ca 1681 and Joseph (b unknown). John and Elizabeth's other sons, Charles (b ca 1687), John Junior (b ca 1689), James (b aft 1695) and Benjamin (b ca 1697) were "pedigreed" enough for me to identify and eliminate them as strong candidates to be the ancestor of our Onslow James Henderson(s). Their children didn't fit the names or dates we were targeting, and were typically too young to be our man.
If there is indeed the direct connection between our two families that we suspect, our James Henderson Senior of Onslow was most likely a grandson of the original Delmarva James of 1661 Northampton/Accomack County VA. Even so, I had a quick run through the children of John and Elizabeth Barnabe Henderson just to make sure there were no obvious gaps, and to satisfy myself that I had thoroughly explored every possibility before ruling them out.
Again, I realized that I had no information on that couple's eldest son, William, nor their youngest, Joseph. Subsequent research showed that both men had pre-deceased their father and William apparently died without heirs, naming only siblings in his will. This explains why there is so little about him online. No descendants to dig up bones. Joseph's will only mentioned a wife (Elizabeth) and an underage daughter, Hannah. That seems to effectively eliminate both of these men, who were already weak candidates due to their age (in other words, they obviously aren't our man, and their children would have been too young to be our James Senior, even had any previously undocumented sons of either man turned up in research).
Both of those men are now grayed out on the updated chart (at the bottom of this article, click to enlarge) with notes indicating no direct male heirs.
In another encouraging development, I believe I have identified an unaccounted-for James Henderson on the 1723 "census" information for Somerset County MD (where the Delmarva group settled after leaving Northampton and Accomack). Since we can account for the James living in 1723 who belonged to John and Elizabeth Barnabe Henderson (as well as John and Elizabeth's grandson James who would not have been old enough in 1723 to head up a household), AND we can account for the James Henderson Junior b 1669 who married Esther, then this third unidentified James (born sometime prior to 1703) would necessarily have had to have belonged to William and Sarah Bishop Henderson, OR to James and Ester Henderson. This is precisely what we were hoping to find. A previously unidentified James of the right age in Delmarva. But it's too soon to get excited. We can't prove he's our James Henderson Senior of Onslow, and we don't know which of the two couples he belonged to. But I'm working on that. I have my suspicions. Things are looking promising, but it's a tough row to hoe trying to find solid documentation that far back.
The third change to the chart is a very tentative (and perhaps premature) one. We know that James and Mary Henderson were the parents of John, baptized 1661 in Northampton Co VA, and also of William and sister Jane (sometimes spelled Jeane), both born before 1668. But in 1668 James has a new wife, Alice, whom he "transports" into Somerset County MD along with his three children. Obviously some time before 1668 Mary had died, leaving John with three very young children. I can just imagine how he liked that situation. He needed a wife, and fast. And as they say, proximity, proximity, proximity.
Up until this point, based on the "transportation" record of 1668, we had idly believed that James brought his children and new wife Alice from England? Scotland? But there was a problem with that. John, the eldest, was clearly baptized in Northampton County VA in 1661. James was active and well-documented in the records of the Delmarva Peninsula all through the early-to-mid 1660's so he had little opportunity to take a practically constantly pregnant Mary on a dangerous ocean voyage to England/Ireland/Scotland (and why do so?), then remarry and travel back to Virginia/Maryland in time to be there in April 1666 when he received a 400a grant for eight headrights in Accomack County VA. When I laid this out on my timeline, I realized he had only moved the family from the colony of Virginia across the (disputed) border into the colony of Maryland. That constituted "transporting" the family That meant wife Alice was likely from Virginia. Proximity, proximity, proximity.
Now, let's talk about those eight headrights in April of 1666. Like I said, I'm a research hummingbird and I dart from idea to idea, and one of the ideas I've been spending some time on is the connection between the Henderson family and the Bishop family. (Remember, James's son William married Sarah Bishop in 1685 [documented], daughter of Delmarva settler Lt. Henry Bishop, who, incidentally was a neighbor to Gilbert Henderson who was also in Hungars Parish in 1661 baptizing a daughter the same year James and Mary Henderson were baptizing their son John, but I digress. Hummingbird.). The Bishops married into the Stokely family (of early Accomack and Northampton Counties, VA, also spelled Stockley and Stoakley). The Bishops also show up in 18th-century New Hanover and Onslow County NC, and could be clue that leads us to the connection between our Onslow group and the Delmarva group. But...hummingbird.
So back to those headright settlers, now that we've established a family connection between the Hendersons and Bishops and Stoakleys, and we're talking about (or were supposed to be) James's second wife, the mysterious Alice, take a look at this record from Cavaliers and Pioneers: "JAMES HENDERSON, 400 acs. Accomack Co., on S. side of Pocomoke Riv., 5 Apr. 1666, Bounded on E. by land surveyed for Thomas Davis. Trans. of 8 pers: Jno. Long, James Collins, Edwd. Top, Eliz. White, Jno. Price, Jno. Aubry, Alice Stewkly, Florence Evans."
Alice! Stewkly! Stokely? Proximity, proximity, proximity.
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| Click chart to enlarge |
*Barnaby Henderson, son of Charles & Parthenia Merrill Henderson of the Delmarva line shows up in Onslow County NC several decades after James Senior and Junior are already settled on property on the New River. This later immigration of Onslow County Hendersons is well-documented and is not the connection we are looking for, however, almost all of the Hendersons who remain in Onslow County today trace back to this line.
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